WT team wins farm disease grant

A West Texas A&M University engineering professor has received $522,522 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service to research methods to respond to a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak.

Bob DeOtte and a team of students will go across the country to study landfills and rendering facilities, two places that can be used for disposing livestock carcasses. Rendering facilities are used to turn parts of or entire carcasses into usable items such as candles and dog food.

A foot-and-mouth disease outbreak among the Texas Panhandle’s livestock could deliver a dreadful blow to the state and national economies because transportation officials would need to close major roadways to prevent sick animals from leaving the infected areas.

“We have about 3 million ... cattle in the Panhandle, each at an average value of $1,000,” he said. “Let’s say we lost every cattle in the Panhandle. That’s $3 billion in lost cattle, and that doesn’t include the cost of disposing animals and jobs lost if the meatpacking plant has to close. And then our export market will be affected.”

“Whether we like it or not, the general economy is tied to the agricultural economy, specifically livestock economy,” he said. “When you have an outbreak, depending on where the outbreak occurred, you basically draw a 6½-mile circle of where the occurrence is, and virtually everything in that area stops.”

Ben Weinheimer, vice president of the Amarillo-based Texas Cattle Feeders Association, said there are 6.5 million cattle in his group’s membership area. That area generates about $10 billion in annual sales, he said.

DeOtte said he will see how well landfills and rendering facilities can be used for properly disposing of carcasses. He said his research will determine if many of those areas can be expanded or improved.

Foot-and-mouth disease awareness in the U.S. increased about a decade ago when other countries reported outbreaks, Weinheimer said.

“It’s a good addition to some of the ongoing work that we had in place over the past several years,” he said of DeOtte’s study. “It was a neutral move on our part to expand efforts to prevent those diseases should an unfortunate event happen.”

Foot-and-mouth disease affects cloven-hoofed animals, which include cattle, pigs, deer and others. The disease causes fever and blisters on the tongue, lips and feet of the animal, said Pablo Pinedo, assistant professor of ruminant health with the Texas AgriLife Extension Service.

“It’s a virus that is very contagious,” he said, adding it can be found in food and water or contracted through direct contact. “So when you have an infection, it spreads very fast.”

The disease affects the animal’s diet and their ability to get pregnant, Pinedo said.

“They stop eating, stop producing and in some cases they can die,” he said. “Most of them recover, but they’re never 100 percent.”

While humans can be exposed to foot-and-mouth disease, the condition does not affect because them the strain is specific to cloven-hoofed animals, DeOtte said.

There has not been a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the U.S. since 1929, cattle industry officials said.

DeOtte’s research will provide data that could help change the laws governing the disposal of carcasses, Topliff said. Current U.S. laws governing responses to animal disease outbreaks are based on international standards, he said.

Local authorities in the U.S. have to stop livestock transportation and euthanize all cloven-hoofed animals within 6.5 miles of the the outbreak, Topliff said. Authorities also have 96 hours to remove carcasses, he said.

“You don’t want dead animals to lay around for 96 hours because you can get decomposition. You’ve got an environmental nightmare if they’re laying all over the place,” he said. “In the case of foot-and-mouth disease, once the animal is dead the virus ceases to live. So it’s not an issue of spreading the virus. But the consequences of several tens of thousands of dead animals beginning to decompose, at a minimum it’s not going to smell very good.”

But Topliff said methods that work overseas don’t necessarily work here.

“In a foreign country where you have 100 cows, that’s not a big deal. You can kill 100 cows pretty quickly,” he said. “But go to Hereford, where you have more than 690,000 head of cattle. How do you euthanize 690,000 head of cattle (in 96 hours)? We’ve been working with USDA and (others) to try to point out where things won’t work.”

USDA and WT officials did an exercise in 2007 and found out it would take 11 days to kill all the cattle in an average area feedyard, Topliff said.

“Your policies might work in other places, but not here in the Panhandle,” he said. “This is a part of the country where we will have the hardest time responding only because of the number of animals. We are the heart of the livestock industry in the United States.”